Two ‘Zootopia’ Sequels May Be in the Works at Disney Animation

It’s been nearly three years since Walt Disney Animation released Zootopia. Despite winning Best Animated Movie at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes, the movie doesn’t feel like it was as much of a sensation as Frozen. But when it comes to box office, the movie didn’t fall far behind with over $1.02 billion raked in worldwide. Knowing what a sensation Zootopia was around the world, it’s surprising we haven’t heard more details on a sequel developing behind the scenes. That changes today.

Zootopia voice actor Tommy “Tiny” Lister, who plays the little fox scammer sidekick to Jason Bateman’s character Nick Wilde, recently revealed that Disney is working on two Zootopia sequels. Find out what the actor had to say below.

Tommy “Tiny” Lister (The Dark Knight, The Fifth Element) recently made a publicity appearance (via Blog Mickey) at a Dave and Busters in Ontario, Canada. While speaking during the event, here’s what he had to say about the forthcoming Zootopia sequels:

“I can tell you for sure I’m doing another Zootopia with Disney. We doing three of them. [There were] three Madagascars. We’re gonna replace that. We’re the biggest film that Disney is producing. The last one was $240 million. This one I’m hearing will be $300 million. That’s what they spent on the budget, not the advertising. But the movie made $2.6 billion, with merchandising and the box office.”

We’re not sure how accurate those numbers are, but someone like Lister is likely in the know when it comes to Zootopia sequels being in development. After all, if Disney is investing in an entire Zootopia land for their Disneyland Shanghai location, turning the title into a franchise that will keep expanding the world of the film makes perfect sense.

As for where the sequel might head, there were rumblings of new environments that Zootopia directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore wanted to go back and explore. Since so much of the original Zootopia had to set up this unique world where animals act like humans in their own sophisticated civilization, there were a lot of cool ideas that got left out of the first movie. You can find out more about those unused ideas over here.

On top of that, Zootopia provided ample social commentary about racism and police brutality by way of various species of animals. Considering how much more real world material there has been about those subjects in the years since Zootopia’s release, Disney (sadly) has plenty of inspiration to bring even more meaningful thematic elements into whatever story is at the center of the sequel.

As of now, we have no idea when these Zootopia sequels would be released or even how far along they are into development. Animated movies take a long time to come together, so we could be waiting for awhile. We haven’t even seen the first bit of footage from Frozen 2, and that movie is due out in November this year. So stay tuned for any further updates.